"A local vicar carried out excavations here in about 1845 and human bones were said to have been found. The eastern chamber still had its capstone in place then, but due to the attention of this over enthusiastic cleric the chamber collapsed as a result of his excavation. He also threw away all the pottery, bones and artefacts he found, as he felt "That they were rude and common stuff" !!!"
(This article originally appeared in the January 1999 issue of the BAG newsletter)
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In response to Rhiannon's Battle Street conundrum, I drove past there today and made a short detour. Just before the end of the lane, on the right, is a modernish housing development...called Sarsen Close, would you believe...in the drive of one house were 3 stones, and more in the gardens of the other houses in the close. One must have been 12' x 6' x 1' thick, laying flat and used as a planter of all things, a real shame because it was a stunning piece of stone...I didn't go into the field or down the path. not knowing really what to look for.
Also 1/4 mile away I found another stone, an absolute beauty, either heavily carved or bless with the most natural art ever.
Now I have some photos, but if I start posting pictures of sarsens everywhere it will mean chaos!
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One central slab of the western, distal, end of the kerbed part of the barrow has upon it a line of concave abrasion and polishing. A diffused area of similar polishing is also to be seen on another stone. These can be explained as the results of the sharpening of stone and flint axe-blades on the sarsens. The construction of Coldrum would have involved the use of numerous timber levers, struts and blocks, which would have required cutting and fashioning. Axe sharpening would thus have been a recurrent necessity. Axe-sharpening traces have been noted at West Kennet, while at Wayland's Smithy sarsen rubbers, termed querns, were used. Axe-sharpening traces have been noted upon some of Stonehenge's sarsen stones and among the sarsen spreads on Overton Down, east of Avebury. Similar sharpening patches and grooves may exist on the stones of the Kentish series. Timber in quantity would have been needed for stone transport.
Paul Ashbee, Coldrum Revisited and Reviewed, Arch Cantiana vol 118, 1998.
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When first built, the Medway's long barrows had high rectangular chambers. These, their entrances finally blocked by a focal portal stone, and with a facade, were at the eastern end of considerable, in surviving instances more than 60m in length, long barrows. Flanked by quarry ditches or scoops, they were retained by sarsen stone kerbs, the surviving boulders being mostly of modest size.
On the eastern side of the Medway there is the Lower Kit's Coty House, where, when scrutinized from the east, it can be seen that the chamber's side stones have fallen to the north. Were they, as were those of Chestnuts, merely pulled back into a vertical position, there would be a chamber almost 7m long and 3.5m wide, with an astonishing internal height, at least at the entrance, of almost 2.8m. At Chestnuts this procedure showed that its stones demarcated a chamber 4m long, 2m wide and 3m high. The Coffin Stone's chamber could have been at least 3.5m high.
Such chamber heights are exceptional, and thus the Medway's megalithic long barrows were undiputedly a unique group of the largest and most grandiose of their kind.
Paul Ashbee - Kent in Prehistoric Times.
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AN EARTHEN MOUND NEAR ROCHESTER
ABOUT 1 mile south of Borstal in a beech wood called "Shoulder of Mutton Shaw" is an overgrown earthen mound some 10 feet in height and between 30 and 35 feet in diameter at its base. It has been known to map-makers for some long time, and has been variously described by them as a tumulus, a castle, and a fort. A recent visit has not confirmed the section of the mound published in V.C.H. Kent, Vol. I (1908), p. 411, there being no sign of a surrounding ditch or of the symmetrical depression there shown in the top. It has no structural features of note, and appears to be a simple tump of earth and chalk. Excavation has certainly been made in the summit of the mound, but this may be due to the burying of a dead sheep which, on the farmer's information, took place some years ago.
Close by the western side of the mound is the sixteenth Boundary Stone of the City of Rochester, and this surely provides the clue to its purpose. In 1460, part of the City boundary ran from Keneling's Crouch or Poule's Cross on the Rochester-Maidstone road to the Manor of Nashenden, to the Mill Hill next Nashenden, thence to the stone, and then between the King's Highway leading to Wouldham and the Manor of Ringes on the east side of that Manor.
According to Hasted the stone is also mentioned in a charter of Charles I to the City. From the charter evidence it is not quite clear whether the stone stood nearer to Ring's Hill Farm, where a boundary stone still stands, or whether it was the stone at the side of the mound. In any case, a boundary mark would almost certainly be provided on such a hillside spur, and it may well be that advantage was taken of an earth mound which may already have been in use as a Manorial meeting place. An examination of original documentary sources would probably decide the question.
R. F. JESSUP.
Archaeologia Cantiana Vol. 55 - 1942 page 71
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I'd like to add, knowing the recent history and layout of the immediate local area, the road that runs through the barrow is totally unnecessary. The original path led off to the South of the lower end of the barrow towards the manor house, and for the sake of splitting off the path and making the lane another 25 yards further South they ran straight through the middle. But by then the mound may have been very low. The soil is extremely sandy, so any mound would quite literally have blown/washed away, as it did at Chestnuts.
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Dazed, confused and peering through a fog for a glimpse of truth...and other similar flowery poetic sentiments. At heart I'm a sceptic when it comes to a man in a suit, a crap anarchist, a collector of live music, pebbles and stones, a friend of the Peaks, an enemy of the State, who suffers with perpetual cold feet. My hair is too long, my legs are too short and my knees are fucked up. I'd be an archaeologist if I could put my mind to studying, didn't have a bad back, and could handle cold weather. I want to buy a stone circle with a house in the grounds and have Phil Harding round for tea...
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